Fighting over the sea: Point Hope residents say drilling will hurt subsistence whaling.
OCS opponents say Gulf leasing OK
The plaintiffs in a case that struck down the current five-year offshore leasing plan for the US are asking that the ruling apply only to those portions of the plan addressing areas off Alaska's northern coast.
In April, a US appeals court agreed with Center for Biological Diversity and native village of Point Hope that the leasing plan did not adequately assess the environmental impacts of leasing in the Beaufort, Chukchi and Bering seas, and vacated the entire plan, which includes areas in the US Gulf, offshore Virginia and offshore Alaska.
In a response filed with the court today, attorneys for the plaintiffs said they thought the decision should only apply to the waters off Alaska and point to existing case law showing that the court can tailor its decision to those specific areas.
“Here, Interior has long and consistently leased the outer continental shelf waters of the western and central Gulf of Mexico,” the filing states.
“There is thus little doubt it would have done so regardless of the inclusion in the leasing programme of the complained about programme areas in the Beaufort, Chukchi and Bering seas.”
If the court agrees with the plaintiffs, it would answer questions about the validity of 1854 leases in the US Gulf sold at three different auctions under the current plan.
It would also clear the way for a lease sale in the western US Gulf planned for August.
Officials with the US Minerals Management Service previously had expressed doubt that the sale could continue if the offshore leasing plan governing the area had to be revamped.
But the groups said the vacature should render the latest sale in the Chukchi Sea null and void.
That sale saw companies bid on 488 blocks, including 275 by Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell, which spent $2.1 billion in high bids.
The latest filing comes in response to a request by the American Petroleum Institute, which had filed a brief asking the DC appellate court to revisit its decision to vacate the entire plan. The group argued instead it should simply be remanded to Interior to improve the environmental analysis.
The US Department of the Interior had also sought to preserve the results of the previous lease sales and make revisions to the plan while continuing with scheduled lease sales.
Department of Justice attorneys said that invalidating all previous and planned sales would create a nightmare for the government, which has collected and spent money from the bids, and for operators, which have already begun to develop the leases.
Attorneys for Center for Biological Diversity and native village of Point Hope said the court was within its power to vacate the plan and must do it, so as not to prejudice the outcome of any future environmental assessments of the drilling programme.
“Here, once companies have bid on and paid Interior for leases, Interior will be much less likely to reverse course and cancel the Alaska lease sales than it would if it were starting on a level playing field,” the attorneys wrote, citing case law.
“Indeed, the court need look no farther than Interior’s petition to see the prejudicial weight of such bureaucratic commitment. Interior’s description of the disruption involved in canceling previously issued leases in the Gulf of Mexico gives a taste of the bureaucratic inertia that would accompany Interior’s [reassessment] if the Chukchi leases were allowed to remain in the interim.”
An official with API told UpstreamOnline his organisation had not had time to review the latest filing.
An Interior Department spokesman said he could not comment on ongoing litigation.